The Art of the Gift

The art of gifting is a hard on to understand. In its simplest terms gifting can actually be really simple, giving someone something and not expecting anything back in return, now what you had once paid money for or "owned" is now given up and that ownership is only shared theoretically, because it now belongs to the other person. Gifting gets more complicated when you are wondering whether to buy a gift for your boss during the holidays, in fear of your fellow co-workers calling you a suck up or a brown-noser. But what is it about gifting someone in a higher position than you are that makes us feel like we have done well? I believe this is the idea of wanting to get the total service as Marcel Mauss discusses in "The Gift".

"The tribe is organized by hierarchical confraternities and secret societies, the latter often being confused with the former, as with the clans. Everything-- clans, marriages, initiations, Shamanist séances and meetings for the worship of the great gods, the totems or the collective or individual ancestors of the clan...". Mauss feels as if there is a hierarchy in our society, which is definitely there so when something is gifted how does this affect the hierarchy? Mauss calls it an inextricable network of rites, of total legal an economical services this meaning we get something out of the act of gifting. The more someone gifts the more "total service" one receives. This total service isn't something tangible but it is rather a new position of where you sit compared to someone else. Gifting gives power over someone else, you gave them something they didn't have before or you shared a social media post that they would have never seen if you had not shared. All of these "gifts" give power over someone making them higher on the social ladder.

While it raises the person giving the gift higher, what does it do for the person receiving the gift. Does it make them lesser or does it give them a power they had not had beforehand? "The invitation must be given, and must be accepted", said Mauss. So by them accepting something shared, given or gifted they are not necessarily being moved to a lower position of total power, because they now have something they didn't before but they do not have a sense of more power over someone else. More gifts, more power!